


In Your Eyes (there's something burning inside you)

by jessequicksters



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Falling In Love, Fanmix, First Love, Nicholas Scratch POV, Witch Curses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:07:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23269663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessequicksters/pseuds/jessequicksters
Summary: Nicholas falls in love with Sabrina as fast as a mortal sells their soul to the devil. The only problem is, in the Church of Night, everything has a price. Even love.Especially love.(He bleeds every time he dreams of Sabrina and when they kiss, it happens too, but love isn't supposed to hurt, right? Except he's never known about love; the only thing he knows is that this half-mortal is going to be the death of him.)
Relationships: Nicholas Scratch/Sabrina Spellman
Comments: 26
Kudos: 82





	1. Chapter 1

Looking back on that first day, Nicholas knew that something had changed within him the second he laid eyes on Sabrina. At the time, he’d thought it was a sign of her power. Long before either of them had ever met the Dark Lord himself, Nicholas could sense a part of him inside her.

Of course, everyone at the Academy shared a part of him, witches and warlocks alike, but Sabrina was different. Up until that point, Nicholas had never met power he couldn’t taste for himself. It was why he indulged himself with the Weird Sisters; they were powerful, yes, but ultimately not what he needed.

“I have a boyfriend,” she told him, eyes bright and wide. She smiled politely, but the slight furrow on her dark brows warned otherwise.

“I'm down with sharing,” he smiled, trying to keep her within his grasp. Something about that phrase he’d said so many times faltered slightly, but time (and Sabrina) was quickly slipping away.

He’d failed to convince her, and she laughed, walking away. She was leaving for her other life, the one he could never be a part of. Of high-school dances, a world so dulled of power and magic, and mortals who lived for what it felt like only one sunrise.

Nicholas went to sleep that night dreaming of living as a mortal. Alone in the woods, he saw Sabrina in the middle of the forest as a faint glow under the moonlight. He walked up to her and tried to reach for her hand.

He was met with the sound of her neck cracking as she turned, glaring at him with snake eyes and a forked tongue. Gasping for air, he jolts out of his sheets. His leg felt wet, and he lifted an arm up to find blood dripping from his wrist, and the puncture wounds of two snake bites on his skin.

“What in Satan’s—” he said to himself, clasping his wrist with his other hand. And as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared again when he let it go.

Perfect skin restored; the pain was gone.

He thought about whether someone as pure as Sabrina had ever felt pain before; thought about what it would take for her to give in to whatever dark forces had tainted almost everyone he knew.

And he shook the thought off; because he shouldn’t even be thinking about this, and wondered what part he would play in all of this.

He woke up the next morning wishing he hadn’t spent so much time asking himself those questions, as there was chatter that the Dark Lord had visited the Academy last night—and he could have been listening.

-

There was one thing Nicholas was quickly learning about Sabrina. She loved power more than anything else. She might not have realised it herself—at least not yet—given the objections most mortals had when it came to desiring power.

But Sabrina had recently signed her name in the Book of the Beast, and perhaps the Dark Lord was already beginning to teach her new things, though something told him that this was a trait that belonged to her and her only.

From her insistence in besting everyone around her, solving every problem that came her way (and problems that were simply passing by), to constantly picking fights with people and institutions bigger than her—Sabrina Spellman was trouble.

“That’s how I like my witches,” he said in the hallways just after she had challenged him to the role of Top Boy.

Sabrina was usually too busy running around back and forth from her two worlds to entertain him much, but it seemed like she took the bait this time.

“You know, Nick? I think you’re scared,” she smiled, taking a step forwards and tilting her head as she held her books in her hands.

“Oh, yeah? Is that what you think, Spellman?”

She nodded sweetly. “It’s what I know. You’ve been far too comfortable here, calling yourself the Academy’s best conjurer, necromancer, and—whatever else it is you think you’re good at.”

He laughed bitterly. “I am good at those things. Certainly better than you, cooped up in that house of yours, in that _high-school_ of yours, and let’s not forget that you’ve only been taking half of your classes here for what, a month?”

“My aunts and my cousin are good teachers,” she shrugged. “Just because I haven’t studied at this institution for long doesn’t mean I haven’t been learning.”

She turned around and before she could leave, Nicholas tried to take one more shot at her, “If you want to learn from the best, then I can say that I can be a _very_ generous teacher.”

Sabrina stopped in her tracks. Nicholas felt a sudden shiver down his spine, flashbacks of his nightmare in the woods, where he was stripped of power, of magic. He could only see the back of Sabrina’s head, like a veil that hid the devil inside.

 _Those eyes_ , _the blood_ , he couldn’t stop thinking to himself.

Quickly enough, he managed to snap out of it when he saw sweet Sabrina’s face turned towards him. It was all her.

“Nick, I don’t know how much experience you have with competitions, but rule number one is: never give an inch to your opponent—and you’re already showing me all of your cards. We haven’t even gotten started.”

-

The weekend before his necromancy exam, Nicholas walked into the library to find a certain Sabrina Spellman, sitting in the corner of the room by herself, staring down at a book as if she was trying to set it ablaze with her mind.

“Fancy seeing you here, Spellman,” he said, running his fingers on the table as he walked closer towards her.

She looked up, briefly, and their eyes met as she flashed him a quick smile and a, “Oh, hi, Nick,” before looking back at her book.

Not what he was used to coming from the five-foot-two bulldozer that was Sabrina, but he was curious, nonetheless. He was stood behind her, craning his neck to get a glimpse of a book she was reading.

“Studying sacred scripture? I didn’t know you took that class,” Nicholas said.

“I don’t,” Sabrina said, not looking up. “Just—”

“—Let me guess, you’ve fumbled something up in your world and are trying to find a cunning solution for it.” He placed a hand on her chair and leaned on it, right behind the curve of her back. He noticed her shoulders curling up under her black turtleneck sweater.

“No,” she shook her head. “I’m just reading about our Dark Lord, and the history of our church. I thought that since I signed my name in his Book, I should familiarise myself with the Path of Night. From a scholarly perspective, at least.”

“That’s it?”

She raised her shoulders and gave him a tiny smile. Her eyes flickered up to his arm behind her as she leaned back, nearly touching, but he quickly settled into the seat next to her.

“You’re not usually at the Academy during the weekend,” he said, flatly.

“Well, my aunts and Ambrose are busy reinforcing the spells surrounding the house and the garden after the demonic break-in we had last week. And my friends are busy.”

“Busy? Too busy to make time for you?” Nicholas decided to press further, “This includes your…”

“Harvey, too.”

Sabrina’s lips were sealed then, flicking another page in her book. Nicholas could see her relaxing the fist that she had kept closed tight. Languidly, he stretched out his arm on the table and rested his head on his hand.

“Are you doing okay, Spellman?”

In the short time they’ve known each other, Nicholas had been blessed to have bore witness to a whole range of emotions displayed by Sabrina: from contempt, disgust (that orgy at her house still drew a certain Look whenever he brought it up), frustration, to elation, kindness, joy and occasionally, even the thinnest slice of razor-sharp _teasing_. He was particularly fond of that one. Thinking about the taste of her became sweeter the further she walked away.

But he had never seen her like this: shut off and boarded up with walls. He wasn’t sure if it was his place, or whether she would even want him intruding in a moment like this. They were nobody to each other— _he_ was nobody to her.

“I know that you never show your cards to your opponents,” he said gently, coaxing for her to meet his eyes, “but I promise if you show me yours, I won’t use them against you.”

And there it was—a twinkle in her eyes as she blinked. “I—uh, thanks, Nick.”

A blush.

He hung on to every single word that came out of her lips after that. He didn’t realise that the back of his neck was bleeding, and wouldn’t come to realise it until finding the stain on his pillow the next morning after a night of glorious dreams. (Him. Sabrina. Her legs wrapped around his waist. The glow of the library fireplace. Orange flames licking her pale skin. Breathing incantations into each other’s mouths. The heat of her tongue.)

“So after reviewing the principles of our church—I have a few questions about our relationship with the Dark Lord and the type of subjugation we’re under for the rest of our lives.”

-

Nicholas knew that hiding things from Sabrina was wrong. Secrets weren’t new to him; he had all sorts tangled up in his life, locked away in chests, in spells, in the back of his mind where even he couldn’t find them.

But being with Sabrina made him forget all of that. On the night of Lupercalia, when they were kissing for the first time, laughing as they wiped away smears of blood on each other’s foreheads, lying half-naked underneath the moon—he was as light as a feather, unburdened by anything.

It wasn’t until _after_ , when Sabrina kept interrogating him about Amalia and everything else he might be keeping from her, that he realised that Sabrina was keeping things from him, too.

It didn't take a reversing hex to reveal that Sabrina was projecting her insecurities onto him. _What else are you keeping from me? How can I know if I can trust you?_

If he had been less occupied by his own transgressions, he might have pushed back. But then, he thought about what the Dark Lord had told him to do several weeks ago.

_Show the girl a good time._

He had even asked him a question in return, but it wasn’t about the seemingly innocuous request that Satan had dropped onto him.

Nicholas asked the Dark Lord about the bleeding and why it kept happening whenever he was thinking about Sabrina—or sometimes even when they were together. He had resorted to using a glamour charm around her these past few weeks, even when he slept in her bed, with their bodies tangled around each other. It was the only way to keep her from finding out and uprooting the earth surrounding Greendale itself.

Sabrina could resort to—extreme measures sometimes, and Nicholas thought that perhaps the Dark Lord could provide him with some insight in the meantime.

Instead, the Dark Lord just chuckled, a low growl that for a second, grew into a high-pitched giggle that sounded like—

_Spellman._

Nicholas stumbled back from where he had been kneeling and hit his back against the corner of his bed. The darkness in the room lifted and the sound of the Dark Lord’s hooves stomping away grew fainter as he left. A gust of cold air blew through the windows and a biting chill ran through his chest, damp with sweat that was stuck to his black shirt.

He wasn’t going to be part of some twisted game. Stuck in some Unholy Trinity with Sabrina and the Dark Lord—Nicholas felt helpless, and he detested ever feeling helpless, or weak.

Left with no choice, he had to tell Sabrina one way or another. Part of that involved bracing himself for his girlfriend potentially raising Hell.

-

“A blood curse,” Nicholas repeated.

Ambrose nodded, biting down on his knuckle. “Yes, I’m afraid it is so, brother.”

“But why would the Dark Lord curse Nick of all people? You’re just as devoted as the rest of the coven, certainly more than me. And after Lupercalia, you’d think that at the very least, I’d be cursed too,” Sabrina frowned.

“Wait, what happened at Lupercalia?” Ambrose asked.

“Nothing happened,” Sabrina threw her hands up, “so if this is the Dark Lord’s twisted way of punishing Nick for us not completing the ritual, then I’m going to have to talk to him.”

“Sabrina, wait—” Nicholas said, reaching out to her as she was already grasping the poppet in her hand and chanting the incantation to summon him.

_“Me invocare te in tenebris, dominus satanas. Venire ad me.”_

Nicholas’ heart started pounding as the room drowned in blood-red stains and black shadows. His heart constricted into a tight muscle, and his fists closed up into balls as he felt himself poring with sweat.

“Nick?” Sabrina asked, and then he saw her eyes—yes, hers—warm and tender, looking straight into him as she held him upright. “Can you hear me, Nick? Ambrose, what’s happened?”

It was his fault. Secrets were like curses; no matter how hard you tried to run from them, they would always catch up with you. The more of them you had, the tighter the devil’s grip on you would be.

He could only hear the sound of hooves coming closer, the growl of the beast, and Sabrina’s voice slicing through the air like a knife as she chanted a spell that made his body feel cold as ice and as light as the wind, before vanishing into thin air.


	2. Chapter 2

Nicholas was a man of faith. He was orphaned young and grew up in the Academy for the most part of his life. He never knew his parents—not in any meaningful way, anyway—and he had been taught by the revolving door of High Priests of the church about what it meant to be a warlock. What it meant to believe in a higher power. He had his reservations about the church and their traditions and of course, was often for progressive reform. However, that was entirely separate from his faith.

The Dark Lord. He had never had any personal, meaningful connection with him the way some other members of the church did. But Nicholas understood his origins more than anyone, the way he had been blessed with dark gifts most of the world could never imagine. And he never, ever, treated that lightly.

It wasn't so much a sense of reverence for his creator that he had, but more of a feeling of responsibility over his powers. Mastering them was one way for him to ensure that he always stayed in control.

Sabrina, on the other hand, seemed to have an intrinsic devil-may-care attitude to everything in life. She had not an ounce of gratitude for what she had been gifted because she considered her powers as a part of her DNA. As atomic as the building blocks that compound to her mortal flesh. As natural as the glow of the half-moon. She could not be separated from either side, human nor witch.

Nicholas woke up to find himself in front of a fireplace in someone else’s home. Standing on top of him was Sabrina, Ambrose, and a woman with dark hair that looked rather—chilling. Nick could smell demons all over her.

“Mrs. Wardwell, please—the Dark Lord is after him. Is there something you can do? Anything? We don’t have long until he finds us again,” Sabrina pleaded.

“I suppose I could place a protection spell on him—the Dark Lord has ways of seeing through them, but it could buy him time for now. But Sabrina, what in Hell’s name were you thinking in summoning him?”

“Sabrina,” Nicholas sat up groggily. Teleportation spells were not advised when the subject was already in an unstable state.

“Nick!” Sabrina stroked his face. “Everything is going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. I promise you, we’ll fight him.”

He nodded, barely understanding what’s about to happen next. But after Mrs. Wardwell cast the protection spell on him, she took him aside to another room.

“My young warlock, I don’t fully know the details of your… condition, but if I may suggest, as subjects of his darkness, we often become more vulnerable when we are weaker in faith.”

“You don’t think I’ve given myself to him enough?” Nicholas replied.

“It’s not about enough or not, child. Not when it comes to the Dark Lord. It’s about _what_ you’re giving him. Think, when you use your magic, where do you channel your strength from? When you send your prayers to him, what’s on your heart? Or should I ask: who—is on your heart?’

“I think I understand what you’re saying.” He understood that it was bullshit.

She nodded and left the room, as Sabrina rushed into his embrace.

“There you are, I thought you sneaked off,” she said, nuzzled into his warm chest. He stroked her head and placed a kiss on her icy blonde locks.

“No, never,” he said, as she hummed in contentment.

-

While Nicholas was still wrestling with Mrs. Wardwell’s advice of: pray, repent, serve him and him only; Sabrina’s ambitions for reformations in the church continued to grow. If Sabrina were a religion, he would happily worship her and her only.

He couldn’t even say that their relationship was moving quickly, because it wasn’t. It felt steady. Nothing was being rushed, though there was nothing to be done about how with every passing day, it was a little harder to say goodbye to her when they parted ways.

Sabrina excelled in her classes, sometimes besting even him in the specialist subjects that he prided himself on. She would tease him in during class—doodling in his book with her magick quill from across the room, conjuring purple doves outside the window, occasionally butting into his conversations with the dead during necromancy classes.

That one got him into trouble more than once, but Sabrina was nothing if not driven with purpose. Even when she was seemingly fooling around, there was a reason why she would do something.

“That was nice, Nick, what you did for that dead witch,” Sabrina stopped him in the hallways after class.

“You mean the one who bewitched entire towns to get them to execute people?”

“Bad people,” she said as a matter-of-factly. “I think that was a really good thing you did, dissolving her spirit off so that she could be at peace.”

He rolled his eyes. “You know that’s not the point of our education, right? Doing good deeds and all that—that’s not really the lesson they're trying to teach us in these classes.”

“You do good deeds all the time," she shrugged.

“Yes, but I did that so I could practice my handling of souls of the departed. Transfiguration with material bodies is one thing, but when you’re dealing with the immaterial—essences of people, that’s a whole other thing entirely, and you can’t let yourself slip, not for a single second, because it’s all about maintaining that stability in your connection with the living, the dead, and the in-betweens.”

Sabrina’s astonished smile was enough to make him blush.

“You are so hot when you’re a nerd, Nicholas Scratch.”

“Spellman, _I’m_ the one who’s supposed to be the flirt, remember?”

“Conformity isn’t really my thing,” she shrugged.

“It most certainly isn’t,” he replied, leaning forward to tilt her chin upwards with a finger. When he kissed her, he felt something he’d never felt before—a deep sense of security within him.

Is this what faith was? Holy and divine? The thought startled him, as he pulled away suddenly. His thoughts had strayed, and he was overcome with powerful feelings that came eerily close to that often described by followers of the False God.

“Nick, what is it?” Sabrina asked.

“Sorry, Spellman, I—I don’t know what came over me.”

“Oh, Nick. You know you can tell me anything.” She started stroking his arm, eyes boring into his soul.

“I think I—” he couldn’t believe he was actually saying these words out loud, “I think I may be having questions of faith.”

Sabrina’s eyes widened, as she nodded slowly. “I see.”

“I know, it’s stupid. And wrong.”

“No, Nick—not at all. Heaven, if there’s anyone that you can say that to without the risk of being sliced up on the altar, it’s me.”

He was so, utterly relieved.

-

Sabrina believed in a lot of things. She believed in forgiveness instead of damnation. She believed in using their dark gifts for good. She believed in true free will, something that even Nicholas could agree that the church was lacking.

If not for the Dark Lord, Nicholas would’ve thought that their magic was powered by the secrets they all kept, piled up on top of one another; the temptations, the betrayals, the threats, acts under duress—it was what kept the Academy, the church, and Satan himself, alive and running.

Even after signing her name in the Book of the Beast, Sabrina was still half-mortal in his eyes. She would always be the half-mortal girl that bewitched him the moment he heard her singing in the Infernal Choir.

He had offered to help her run through her part in the choir before her upcoming performance. She was standing in the middle of her room singing as beautifully as a siren. He was a sailor ready to drown into the abyss for her.

_“Here is my temple of ruins, o Dark Lord hear our prayer. We offer these bodies alight in flames, may the sun never shine again.”_

She closed her choir book. “How did that sound?”

“Not a note out of place.”

He shuffled backward on the bed as Sabrina climbed on top of him, eyes dark with something more than just unholy praise.

It was desire.

“Nicholas,” she said, spelling out his name like an incantation.

“Yes,” he whimpered, leaning in closer as she held his face in her hands.

_“Our hearts are slow, the sun is low; I have love to offer, I have love to give; a devotion like no other.”_

Nicholas felt a rousing chill jolting through his body that felt like he was being dunked into nymph pools underneath the moonlight. He’d never heard this spell before, but from the effects, Nicholas could tell that it was some form of an energy booster between them. Not exactly a performance enhancer, or even a pleasure enhancer—it was more akin to a soul-bonding ritual.

But this type of power didn’t come from the Dark Lord; nothing weighed him down at this moment, and any love spells that came from him would always result in a tiny scratch on one’s heart, like plucking a single thread from a cotton bed.

“Sabrina, have you been studying Ancient Greek magic?”

“From Aphrodite herself. I thought it would be fun to try,” she said. “I could undo it if you’d rather we—”

“No,” he said, hands placed firmly on her petite shoulders. “I would love to do this with you—to be connected with your magic like this—but are you sure? For your first time?”

“You said it yourself, maybe our gifts from the Dark Lord can’t be trusted. So, I turned to other witches for new ways of using magic. Besides, we might have signed our names in his Book, but this spell isn’t about our magic—it’s about us. And nothing can ever change the fact that you’re you, and I’m me, and together…”

“I never thought the day would come when you would start gushing over me, Spellman,” Nicholas said, pinning her onto the bed and preparing to give himself to her entirely.

-

He was always right about one thing; Sabrina absolutely relished being in charge.

There was nothing more satisfying to him than being bound into submission by her; with her hungry kisses, devilish moans, her lustful brown eyes and her ecstatic smile whenever he had given her whatever she needed—and wanted.

Even after the two of them were fast asleep, Nicholas continued dreaming about it. Sweet Lucifer, was there anything that wouldn’t do for this girl?

And then it happened.

As he was dreaming of the moment, over and over again; their bodies slammed together, finally inside her, there was a slight tug in his chest.

The Devil’s Claw.

He looked up to see no longer Sabrina, but the Dark Lord himself on top of him. He tried to shove him off, but he wouldn’t budge, as they ended up being locked into a wrestling match.

“You’re mine,” the Dark Lord growled, and Nicholas jolted awake.

He’d forgotten, for a brief moment, as Sabrina was comforting him from his nightmare and heading downstairs to ask her Aunt Hilda for some calming herbs, that he was still keeping secrets from her.

He’d never told her what the Dark Lord had ordered him to do, all those months ago, and gets into a panic attack just as Sabrina re-enters the room. He was suddenly overcome with a mad form of paranoia, accusing her of being all these horrible things: a pawn of the Dark Lord, a curse onto his soul, his spirit, and he himself didn’t know why all of these words were coming out of his mouth.

It was too painful in the end, and he couldn’t bear watching her cry with confusion, anger and guilt—not after the bond they had just shared.

And so he dug himself further into a hole that he wouldn’t even realise he was in until much, much later.

He knew it wouldn’t be fair to make her forget. It would've been wrong and cruel. So he did the only thing that was right in his eyes and made them _both_ forget from the moment they had fallen asleep.

The next morning, Sabrina woke him with a kiss on the lips. Nicholas borrowed her toothbrush in the bathroom and wondered why his gums were bleeding when he spat in the sink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit 29/03/20: edited a tiny bit of the spell because rhyming couplets are annoying shfkad


	3. Chapter 3

When word spread about what happened to Sabrina at the church, Nicholas knew that it was only the beginning for whatever was coming next. He couldn’t have anticipated just how much further he would fall, but it felt like someone had pushed him that much closer over to the edge of the cliff.

Sabrina’s rising power was astounding to watch in real-time. He would’ve been lying if he’d said that he wasn’t afraid of it, because he was, but it was Sabrina. She was still the beautiful, fearless, girl he fell in love with.

It still left a bitter taste in his mouth—the fact that Harvey Kinkle, of all people, was there for her when he wasn’t. Nicholas tried to shake it off, and with every doubting moment Sabrina would remind him with gentle, kind words, that she still loved him, that _he_ would be the one she’d want to catch her when she fell.

“Nicky, are you placing your bet?” Dorcas asked him when he was eating lunch alone one day, Sabrina off at Baxter High for some basketball game.

“No one told me anything about a bet going around.”

She whipped out an enchanted top hat and shoved it in his direction. Her and Agatha spoke together, “We’re making bets on what we think Sabrina is. Since you know her so well, you’d probably earn your winnings quite easily.”

“Girls,” Prudence stepped in, sliding her lunch tray next to Nicholas. “Let’s play nice, here. Darling Nicky wasn’t even in the church when Sabrina went up in Hellfire—”

“—levitating like Lucifer, proclaiming that she was the Dark Lord’s sword,” the girls continued.

“Everyone at the Academy is grateful for what she did, Nicky, but are we supposed to believe that she’s just some half-breed mortal now? How safe are we really, with someone like her here? Father Blackwood refuses to speak about it. She tapped into powers from the Dark Lord that he’s never even seen. Do her eyes turn pale white when she’s in bed with you, too?” Prudence bit into an apple.

There were days when Nicholas would’ve had it in him to play along with whatever games the Sisters roped him into, but was not one of those days.

“Whatever she is, she’s still the same person I know. And unlike you sheep, I’m not afraid of her. She’d never hurt me.”

Dorcas and Agatha pouted at him as he stood up.

“No bet then? Winner gets an extra day of life from each person who tosses their name into the hat. You could win up to three weeks of our collective lives, in the event that you _do_ know what she is,” Prudence said.

“He has no idea what he’s getting into,” Dorcas and Agatha snickered as he walked away.

-

It happened so fast, when the Dark Lord arrived at Greendale and claimed Sabrina as his.

His daughter.

It all made sense now.

Nicholas felt cheated on. The Dark Lord had been taunting him from the very first time he’d laid eyes on Sabrina.

_It was real. I promise. I really, truly, fell for you._

The Dark Lord couldn’t resist appearing before him again, just as Nicholas had retreated to the Academy.

“You’ll never have her.”

Nicholas was backed up into corner of his room as the Dark Lord approached him, grinning with that nauseatingly nefarious grin of his. Nicholas had been crying and vomiting blood in his own room. Is this what heartbreak felt like? Physically falling apart? Or was it something much more sinister?

He could’ve said something, anything. He might not have been able to battle his devotion, but he could have been truthful. The Dark Lord had said nothing about telling her, but a part of him had always grappled with the fear that their relationship was hanging by a thread.

Sabrina. Harvey. Baxter High. The mortal world. He thought that all of these things stood in between them, when in reality, it had been himself all along.

“Why so glum, Nicholas? You’ve been a devoted member of the church, never had any complaints, as far as I remember from your prayers all these years.”

He tried to collect himself, but couldn’t stop his voice breaking, “Maybe I’ve changed. And I met someone who’s changed the meaning of faith for me.”

“Is that so? Go on, then. Tell me where your faith is.”

“Sabrina. I know her; she won’t do it. She won’t let you destroy Earth.”

The Dark Lord laughed, coming closer towards him.

“My, my, Mr. Scratch, it seems you truly have adopted my daughter’s lust for recklessness. I must say, I do admire it, truly—your devotion to her, it goes against everything you think you know. It goes against everything you are.”

Nicholas’ throat went dry. “What are you saying?”

He put a hand on his shoulder, and Nicholas felt a searing burn that penetrated even deeper than his bones.

“Mr. Scratch, it was never your destiny to love. One could say that your body isn’t quite… built for it.”

Nicholas felt sick to his stomach. He was already screaming and could barely breathe, much less speak. The Dark Lord whispered in his ear.

“For being a good disciple for so long, I will give you this one thing. Rejoice in the fact that your Darkness has generously chosen to divulge this with you. Your parents were drowning in dark debts; first, they begged for Aphrodite to give them a child, but they didn’t like what she asked for in return. So, I answered their prayers, in exchange for one thing.”

“Is this what it is, then, the blood curse I have?” Nicholas gritted through his teeth.

“Blood curse? No, no, no, my dear Nicholas. What I took from you, was your ability to love.”

Oh. Oh, _no_.

“It holds a lot of power, that pesky little thing. I chose you for the devotion because, well… I wanted to watch how much you were willing to bleed for her.”

Sabrina was the first person he had ever, truly, loved. 

“Yes, love will kill you. And now that she has revealed her true form and her true heritage to you—the final step would be for you to accept her as she truly is. Do you, Nicholas? Will you still love my daughter for all she is, while knowing that I will always be inside her, and therefore I will always be inside you?”

-

He didn’t tell Sabrina any of it when they were preparing to trap the Dark Lord inside the Acheron. His body was falling apart. He’d used up the last of Dorian’s elixir to give him the strength that needed to go through with the final plan.

He realised too little too late, then, that he’d made the same mistake twice.

_“I love you, Spellman. You taught me how to love.”_

And that was it.

His body was dying anyway, and his heart—it never belonged to him.

-

One time, in the middle of the endless pain and suffering, Nicholas found a dream—no, a memory, of him and Sabrina one night at the Academy, when they were both still ships circling each other in the night.

Prudence had insisted they all play a game of ‘what would you do if you were mortal’ and of course, all eyes were on Sabrina as she answered.

“Study witchcraft of course,” she said without missing a single beat. “Growing up in a family of witches, it would’ve been impossible not to try.”

Nicholas couldn’t help but smile. She was sitting on the armrest of his chair in Dorian’s club, and patted him on the shoulder.

“What would you do?” she asked.

“Well, we all know witches and warlocks struggle with love at the best of times. If I were a mortal, I’d learn what it is to love.”

“Falling in love isn’t something you just do,” Sabrina said, while everyone around them leaned in closer to listen. “It’s way more complicated than that. And not half as easy.”

He conceded, “Won’t you enlighten us then, Spellman?”

“Well, _I’m_ not exactly the expert on it,” she said, looking down.

“You love that mortal boy, don’t you, Sabrina?” Prudence teased from across the table as Dorcas and Agatha laughed.

“How many times do I have to tell you that Harvey and I aren’t together anymore?”

Sabrina was used to chastising Prudence by now, but something in her tone sounded genuinely annoyed.

“Besides, it’s not like that. Falling in love. It’s… different, every time, and even when it happens, it’s easy to get mixed up in feelings. Is it infatuation? Or lust? Or just familiarity? I don’t know what you guys feel, or don’t feel, but for the rest of us, it’s hard enough separating all these parts of yourself. It takes a lot more than just a feeling to know that you really, truly, love someone.”

“What does it take, then?” Nicholas asked, leaning over and looking up towards Sabrina as his chin brushed against her lap.

A tight silence held the air together, as everyone waited for an answer. Sabrina looked affronted, at the fact that everyone was turning to her to be some sort of mortal love-guru, but she was never one to turn away from the needy. Even when the needy were a group of pestering witches.

“I guess there’s time? Mortals don’t live as long as we do. My parents knew that and chose to love anyway.”

“Morbid, isn’t it?” Prudence teased.

“Not as morbid as joining the cult of Satan.”

That did get her several eye-rolls.

“Sabrina?” Nicholas asked, feeling slightly buzzed from Dorian’s cocktails and with his head fully in her lap now, “Does it scare you? Love?”

She tipped her head back, “Oh, absolutely! It terrifies me sometimes, Nick. But what are you gonna do for the rest of your life if you don’t?”

And that was when Nicholas knew that he’d be damned if he spent the rest of his life too scared to chase after love. To never feel it—the way he felt Sabrina’s hands playing with his hair as his fingers traced the hem of her red skirt.


	4. Chapter 4

The thing about being a warlock, with the ability to live lifetimes over your mortal counterparts, is that you often think life is going to go by slowly. And so it’s easy to start slipping and think that change is going to come slowly, too.

Nicholas couldn’t have prepared for the amount of _change_ he’d see in his life in that first year that he’d known Sabrina.

He fell in love with a half-mortal, which was, well—as deadly a sin as it could be with his upbringing, before discovering that she was the daughter of Satan himself.

But, still, none of it compared to harboring him inside his body for what felt like decades on end.

So sue him, as mortals would say, for not coming out right the other end.

The question was—why did he come out alive at all?

Nicholas had been on the brink of death when he took the Dark Lord inside him and by all accounts, he shouldn’t have survived.

And yet, here he was.

He was having a drink at Dorian’s when he caught her in the corner of his eye, strolling in with a bright red dress and black heels to match.

“Should I pour one for her?” Dorian asked from behind the bar, wiping a couple of glasses clean.

“Not sure if she’ll be coming this way,” Nicholas said, as he watched Sabrina chatting with a couple of their classmates in the centre of the room.

“Oh, don’t be such a bore, Nicholas. Invite her, then. The Nicholas I knew wouldn’t just be sulking in the corner while a pretty girl walks into the room. Besides, you don’t need me to tell you that she’s just not _any_ girl.”

“Well, the Nicholas you knew is gone. The one she knew, too.”

Dorian rolled his eyes and set his hands on the table. “I know, I know—you’ve been scarred by the Dark Lord. Haven’t we all? You forget that a lot of us have been here much longer than you, my dear, and we’ve seen things, felt things… over lifetimes of pain.”

“I wasn’t asking for your pity, Dorian,” Nicholas warned.

“None of us are all that different. We play games with the Devil, we pay the price. We trade parts of ourselves, have them taken from us. We live on for decades, centuries even, and we all end up morphing into the ugliest versions of ourselves, eventually. Be grateful that you’ve gotten there first. Besides, you’re not half as bad as the rest of us would be if we held the Dark Lord inside of us for as long as you did.”

Nicholas turned around to look at Sabrina again, who had happened to catch his eye in that exact moment. His eyes flickered down instinctively, but he put on a smile as he looked back up again.

The sadness in her eyes didn’t go unnoticed.

“Go ahead, I’ll pour you both one on the house,” Dorian waved him off.

Nicholas got out of his seat and walked over to her.

“It’s good to see you,” she said before Nicholas even managed to get a word in.

“Likewise, Spellman. Beautiful as always.” He knew he shouldn’t, not when they’d agreed to be friends, but the truth is the truth.

She smiled, as she always did. They had been keeping their distance lately, after everything that’s happened. Sabrina had gone off to rule Hell, but came back saying she’d given up the throne. But even then, everything had changed. They’d said things to each other—done things to each other—that neither time, nor magic, could ever fix.

Maybe Dorian was right. Nothing will ever be the same, and the time will come, too, when Sabrina would be the one falling down that rabbit hole.

She had her moments, sure; power-hungry, abrasive, dismissive and with a savior-complex that blinded her to everyone’s needs around her. But she’d never really _fallen_ , not like the way Lucifer did from Heaven, nor the way Nicholas felt when he’d been broken from the inside out.

And yet, he knew, that when that day came—he’d still love her, anyway.

“I think Dorian’s made drinks for us,” Sabrina raised an eyebrow, smiling hesitantly over Nicholas’ shoulder.

He turned around to see Dorian with a coy smile, licking the syrup off a spoon.

Nicholas managed to gather himself before turning back towards her, “How about we play that drinking game we used to?”

“Spill or spell?” she asked.

“Mmhm.”

She took the bite.

“You’re on, Scratch.”

-

Nicholas dropped his head on the table as Sabrina won another round. They were several drinks in by now and everything felt warm, uncomplicated and _good_.

“I remember everything, crystal clear,” she smiled, chin on her knuckle. Her eyes were glazed over with so many things he’d missed—there was a certain ease to her that he hadn’t seen in a long time.

“What spell shall I choose for you this time?” Sabrina asked.

“Anything but another conjuring spell,” Dorian warned from the other end of the bar. Neither of them realised that he was still listening. “Please, this place is already littered with demons, and I’d rather not clean up afterwards.”

He had a point. With every round he lost, Sabrina had challenged him to conjure a myriad of demons; all harmless, or those which Dorian was certain would behave under his roof. Beleth, who was in charge of the music played in Hell, showed up and started threatening the DJ. Nicholas had to banish him not long after.

“Okay, Dorian. No more demons tonight. How about… a potion, then? How are your advanced classes going, Nicholas?”

He stretched his arms up and behind his head and noticed that Sabrina hadn’t blinked once.

Shrugging, he replied, “They’re going well. Still waiting on the day you’d finally join me.”

“I have two terms left until I can transfer. As long as I pass the exams, of course.”

“Yeah? What are you learning now?”

“Memory potions,” Sabrina replied. “My aunt Zelda says they’re normally used for people with head injuries, or those with short term blackouts they’d like to remember.”

“Is there something you’d like me to find in the back of your mind, Spellman?”

Nicholas knew he was pushing boundaries here, but Sabrina didn’t seem to be putting up too many walls tonight. They were seated much closer to each other on the high stools than they had been at the beginning of the night. Their hands were so close they could be touching; in fact, the only thing in between them was the rim of the empty cocktail glass they shared.

Also, there was the fact that he _knew_ her. As hard as they tried to keep their distance, there was no forgetting what they shared. All the stolen moments in between classes, nights in her bed, in his, after-school lounging, desperate kisses, gentle lullabies during lazy afternoon naps—all the little ticks that made them just work, it was all there.

So when Sabrina purses her lips and goes silent for just a fraction of her second, and her eyes drop under her dark lashes, before perking back up with a witty answer from left-field:

“Who said anything about me?”

He knew that he’d never want to be anywhere else.

“Dorian, do you keep the octopus skeletons in your pantry?” Nicholas asked, and Dorian huffed again.

-

Memory potions are funny, if not tricky, things. Like Sabrina said, they work best on those who have had very recent memory loss. It was meant for immediate recovery, not long-term retrievals—for that, you’d need a more complex spell. However, Nicholas wasn’t the Academy’s best student for nothing.

He’d read in a 16th century book that these potions can be adapted to work on a specific moment in time, so long as one could connect it to something from that time.

“This is a lot of work, Nick, maybe we should’ve just conjured another demon. Have a time in mind?”

Squeezed inside Dorian’s pantry of dead, rare and dangerous things, there wasn’t much room for them to move through the alleys, but Nicholas had managed to find every ingredient to throw into a mini cauldron that was already on the brink of boiling.

“Do you trust me, Spellman?”

“Why, are you going to need my fingers or something?”

“Something like that,” he smiled, extending a hand out to her. “May I?”

She looked at his hand curiously, but gently placed hers on top. Her hand was cold, colder than he’d expected, and he squeezed it gently before proceeding.

He chanted the spell under his breath, quietly so she couldn’t hear.

The cauldron settled down from its simmer, and Nicholas poured its contents into two vials for both of them to share.

“Should I be scared at what this moment’s going to be?” Sabrina asked.

“Your rules, remember? If you don’t want to, then I’d happily take a double-dose of memory lane.”

“Now, you know you can’t try to talk me out of this now,” she said, drinking it down. He shook his head and let out a chuckle as he followed suit.

-

The night was cold, and quiet.

Nicholas could only remember Sabrina’s hands—they had been so warm, the first time he held them in his. It must’ve been when they danced for the first time. Not even during the production of Lucifer and Lilith; Sabrina was always careful to keep them to herself, then.

And the night was still cold, and quiet, as Nicholas and Sabrina lay on top of her rooftop looking at the moon.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, hands folded onto her stomach.

He looked over to her. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I wasn’t—I wasn’t there for you, Nick. When you needed me to be. When you needed me to _listen,_ to ask you what was going on.” She was angry at herself, and he didn’t know how to hold her without his hands. Without hers.

“Sabrina, stop. It’s not your fault. I… I should’ve told you. About everything, about my visions, my dreams, the bleeding, the Dark Lord's devotion—”

“He was hurting you and I didn’t even know it.” She looked at him, eyes welling up.

“Sabrina, no.” He rolled over closer to her, careful to keep their distance. “Please, listen to me. It was a mistake, me using that spell that night to make us forget. I just couldn’t take it anymore, your—the Dark Lord. He wouldn’t leave me alone. He was using you to taunt me; the more I fell for you, the harder his grip on me was.”

He’s only sorry it took a night of drunken potion making to even make him remember that he’d buried this so deep within himself.

“But you’re okay now?” Sabrina asked, voice small.

He nodded. “I promise.”

“How do you know for sure?”

Well, the answer was that Nicholas _didn’t_. Magic was often unstable and unpredictable, but there were principles to it that meant that certain things were set in stone. And if the Dark Lord had taken away his heart, for lack of a better term, that wouldn’t have been undone by even the cleansing spell that Ambrose performed of him to rid him of his residue.

The only other possibility was that the Dark Lord had restored it to him, which was, impossibly unlikely.

“I don’t,” Nicholas admitted in the end. “I don’t know what happened.”

All of a sudden Sabrina was dangerously close to him, icy gray hair as white as the moon, brushing against his shoulder as she leaned in closer.

“Can I…” she said, doe eyes looking up at him.

The last time they were this close it had taken everything inside of him to say no—if not for the fact that they were broken, Nicholas was also inches away from death. Love was a curse he was born into.

But now? He’s not so sure.

Because Nicholas didn’t need to kiss Sabrina to know that he was still very, very much in love with her.

The feeling of her lips pressing against his felt like a reaffirming spell of sorts; the type that you know how to do a million times over in the back of your mind, with your eyes closed, in your sleep, in limbo; Nicholas would never forget the way he felt when he was with Sabrina.

When they pulled away, there was a sensation inside him that felt like a familiar jolt of electricity.

“Did you—” Nicholas asked.

“—I felt it, too,” Sabrina nodded. “What did we do?”

Nicholas wracked his brain for the answer. It was so close. He knew it—that feeling was the same feeling he’d had when Sabrina had placed that love bond on them.

“Aphrodite,” Nicholas said. “Sabrina, I think… that was the love spell you used on our first night. Together.”

Sabrina’s eyes widened. “Oh? Oh! She’s saved you.”

“She must’ve,” Nick breathed out a sigh, half in disbelief that he’s officially free from the Dark Lord’s curse, half reeling from the kiss. “I never asked you, where did you learn that spell?”

“I don’t actually remember? I think she came to me in a dream, and then I started reading a little more around Ancient Greek magic. She must’ve known that the Dark Lord had taken your heart and had offered you a chance to be saved.”

“Makes sense, and the fact that I survived after sacrificing myself for you. The Dark Lord told me that my parents refused to give up a sacrifice when they prayed to her for a child; she must’ve thought that that was sacrifice enough.”

Sabrina held his hand then, resting her head on his shoulder as he kissed her head. “I’ve never seen a mortal or witch love like you do, Nicholas Scratch.”

“Well, they’ve never had a reason to.”


	5. [nabrina fanmix]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the nabrina fanmix! I wrote the whole thing to this playlist, so enjoy!

[ **_oh, spellman_ ** ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1MUUemu3QO8SeTdkK3wFkt?si=NY8l0tcgSL-w5ZsBD-QhDQ)

***

_now the tables have turned / now I'm up all night /_

_I'm picturing you / acting like a fool_   
  


_I'm on the other side / you're like a full moon/_

_and I'm up all night / howling at you_

***


End file.
